Dozens of people have died and thousands more were injured in the most recent surge of unrest in Indian-administrated Kashmir. The latest episode began after security forces killed Burhan Muzaffar Wani, commander of the Kashmiri separatist group Hizbul Mujahideen. Protests turned violent on July 10, 2016, when Indian military forces opened fire on thousands of demonstrators who defied a curfew.

Home to around 12 million people, Indian-administrated Kashmir is geographically divided between India and Pakistan; both countries have been involved in a decades-long dispute over claims to the valley. A number of politicians, separatist groups and rebels have been fighting for a right to self-determination. Today, Kashmir is the most densely militarised zone in the world, with a reported half a million soldiers.

Over 50 people have reportedly been killed, with over 1,000 people injured. Indian forces have reportedly been using pellet guns to disperse crowds, resulting in serious injuries — some of them fatal.

According to The Hindu, one Kashmiri hospital that treats only critical patients from as many as ten affected districts, had received 933 pellet cases as of the first week of August.

By then, many people had had enough. Kashmiri activist and journalist Najeeb Mubarki — as well as other netizens — tweeted photos of victims affected by the crackdown:

What if it happened to someone you knew?

Once similar photos of red-eyed Kashmiris — some as young as nine years old — emerged, mainstream media began to pay a bit more attention, but the advocacy group Never Forget Pakistan felt the situation was even more dire. Will the world care more about the violence in Kashmir if it impacted people they know? This question was the impetus behind the awareness campaign #IndiaCantSee.

The campaign received a lot of traction, but critics say that it might have done more harm than good to the movement in Kashmir, since it was spearheaded by a Pakistani group. Kashmiri activists often face threats and smear campaigns, accusing them of working with the Pakistani state or extremist groups against Indian sovereignty. Indian writer and editor Chintan Girish Modi explained his reservations about the campaign:

This is why I'm skeptical of social media campaigns that grab eyeballs but are terribly thought through — causing more damage than good. After the Pakistani campaign that ran morphed images of Indian celebrities with make-believe injuries from pellet guns, there's now an Indian campaign with morphed images of Pakistani celebrities with similar injuries on their faces. The first campaign was done in the name of highlighting human rights abuses in Kashmir, and was appropriated by Pakistanis to talk about how Indian Administered Kashmir is so fucked up while Pakistan Administered Kashmir is oh-so-awesome. Zero ownership for how the Pakistani state supports terrorism/jihad (pick your term) in Kashmir. The second campaign was done by Indians who want Pakistanis to take a good long look at their terrible human rights record before they talk about AFSPA [the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Acts that give special powers to the Indian Armed Forces] and state sponsored armed violence/terrorism (pick your term) in Indian Administered Kashmir. I won't be surprised if Indians use this to prove their chest-thumping patriotism instead of looking at how we are alienating Kashmiris of all religions, and have our own terrible human rights record. Social media is such a powerful tool for dialogue and diplomacy but looks like it is being used for a digital war. Once again, the voices from Kashmir are being drowned out by Pakistanis and Indians.

Should pellet guns be used?

We turned to the Global Voices community to ask authors and editors from the affected regions what they thought of the use of pellet guns in Kashmir. There was unanimous condemnation of the practice. Vishal Manve, an Indian journalist and Global Voices author, said:

The use of pellet guns on innocent Kashmiris should be banned at the earliest. It's inhumane, unethical, severely physically cripples civilians and is a grave human rights violation committed by the state. There is nothing non-life threatening about pellet guns as claimed by the Indian government. They maim, hurt, damage and cripple young children, women and youngsters who sometimes lose their eyesight due to these dangerous weapons.

Sana Jamal, a freelance journalist and writer from Islamabad, Pakistan, was very clear about her denunciation of the practice:

One glimpse at the deformed faces and maimed bodies of Kashmiri people is enough to speak of horrors caused by pellet shotguns.

It is absolutely NOT OK to use pellet guns or any form of violent means on people in Kashmir. The state machinery needs to listen to the demands of the people in the region. The only legitimate government is the one that is of the people, by the people and for the people. So the only way to stop the violence in Kashmir is for the government to first carry out a formal referendum on whether people in Kashmir want to remain with India or not.

What about Kashmiri voices?

From Sringar, Kashmir, Facebook user Shahnawaz Khan expressed his frustration over the support of pellet guns being used on protesters:

When the Indian trolls justify the state brutalities by saying that ‘Kashmirs are attacking our soldiers with stones’ do they realise the point they are making. They do, and they know it is the same point we are making, that it is Us vs Them, that we are not one, that we have nothing in common.
We are Kashmiris, they are Indians. Two separate nations, two different identities. One oppressed the another oppressor.

Renowned Kashmiri author and journalist Basharat Peer, who regularly writes about the human rights violations in Indian-administrated Kashmir, was overwhelmed by the violence:

One of the hardest things I have ever done in my life was to look at the morning paper in Srinagar today. A 14 year old girl blinded by the pellet guns of Indian troops while she was in her home.

Mirza Waheed, renowned Kashmiri novelist and journalist, described the Indian government's actions in the valley as corrupt:

India's definition of ‘integral part’ is perverse to say the least. A moral system that allows you to kill, maim and blind children is a corrupt one, to say the very least.

It is quite clear then that India, in its empiric hubris, in the brute arrogance germane to occupying powers, treats Kashmiris as one thing and one thing alone–a subject race that must be punished, pulverised, into submission.

It's also Iabundantly [sic] clear that historically India has treated Kashmir as nothing but a colony, a territory of conquest, a trophy that must be won by any means.

Only other state that routinely brutalises a people is Israel. India's thinking classes should be ashamed it's being done in their name.

Any way you look at it, Kashmiris, as a people, as a society, are facing hitherto unseen collective punishment at the hands of a hawkish state.

India has kept Kashmir under a ruthless, punitive siege for nearly a month now. I hear of enormous suffering and resilience every day.

The Kashmir valley has been mired in conflict for three decades now and Kashmiri voices are often muffled by the tussle between India and Pakistan. Despite curfews, internet blackouts and campaigns accused of misappropriating Kashmiri voices, Kashmiris are increasingly speaking out for themselves. Their voices join many others protesting in Delhi and Calcutta, calling for immediate demilitarization of the region.

Imagine teaching for 23 years in a small Afghan refugee camp at Kot Chandana village, on the outskirts of the Punjab province in Pakistan, and then, one day, learning that Stephen Hawking himself has lauded you and your work. Aqeela Asifi—one of the top ten finalists for this year's Global Teacher Prize—knows this feeling. In a video posted on the contest's Facebook page, Professor Hawking announced this year's finalists, and Asifi is among them.

The competition's website says the prize is awarded every year to a truly exceptional educator:

The Global Teacher Prize is a US $1 million award presented annually to an exceptional teacher who has made an outstanding contribution to their profession. The prize serves to underline the importance of educators and the fact that, throughout the world, their efforts deserve to be recognised and celebrated.

Asifi’s life in Afghanistan was relatively simple. She belonged to a family that supported her right to education, despite cultural challenges. She was content with her career as a teacher in Kabul, until the Taliban took power, making it impossible to continue her work. Asifi and her family found sanctuary in Pakistan in 1999, hoping for a better and safer future.

It was in an Afghan refugee camp that she began her brave and tireless struggle to educate Afghan refugee girls. It proved to be no easy task, and Asifi soon realized she was dealing with people who had no concept of a right to education for girls. In an interview with the organizers of the Global Teacher Prize, Asifi summed up her journey:

When I asked the girls why they were going absent from school, they said girls are not supposed to go to school.

Relentless, Asifi established a small classroom in the refugee camp, where she's now been teaching for years, receiving multiple awards for her work. She's been on the job so long already that she's even begun educating the daughters of her first generation of students:

The girls I taught 20 years ago now send their daughters to my school, so I’m teaching the second generation of my students.

Lili Mao, a graduate student in the Television Management Department at Drexel University, traveled to Pakistan last December to film Asifi at work with Afghan girls. Mao says she witnessed the girls’ eagerness to get an education, she told her university's newspaper:

I interviewed some girls at their school, and they shared their dreams with me. One girl said that she wanted to be a teacher, so that she could teach other refugee girls like Asifi. Another girl said that she wanted to be a doctor to serve her country.

Pakistan's Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai, prominent for promoting the universal right to education, also contacted Asifi, congratulating her over the phone on being among the finalists for the Global Teacher Prize. Malala Yousafzai’s father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, also conveyed his best wishes to Asifi over Twitter:

The other finalists, selected from some 8,000 applicants, include teachers from Palestine, India, the United States and United Kingdom, Kenya, Finland, Australia, and Japan. The Global Education and Skills Forum will announce the competition's winner on March 13, 2016, in Dubai. Whatever the outcome, Asifi has already won many hearts with her work in education, and she's far from finished.

Protest against license cancellation of media group BOL in Karachi. Image credit Stand with BOL, used with permission

Arrests, protests, raids….so much has been happening around BOL Network, a brand new, well-financed Pakistani media outlet that gave co-ownership to journalists and threatened to shake up the media scene in Pakistan.

Thousands of Pakistani journalists working for BOL have been demonstrating in Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore on a daily basis, but coverage of their protests by other media has been scant. Their demands are simple: to stop violations of their rights and allow them to launch the much-hyped and controversial BOL television channel.

The story, written by NYT Pakistan Bureau Chief Declan Walsh, stated that Pakistani software company Axact — the parent company of BOL — has been making millions of dollars from a fake degree scam. A government investigation swiftly followed but protesting journalists say the state and rival media outlets are using the Axact scam as a pretext to target BOL.

Protest against license cancellation of media group BOL in Islamabad. Image credit Stand with BOL, used with permission.

The PFUJ said they had left the channel during a moment of crisis and passed a resolution during a meeting on Saturday proposing that they should not receive other posts in Pakistani media.

But not all journalists agreed with PFUJ's response. Senior journalist Talat Hussain believes the scandal has raised serious concerns about media accountability in Pakistan, while another well-recognised journalist Quatrina Hosain wants BOL to demonstrate its funding sources are clean before it enters the local media industry:

Evidence against Axact pretty cut and dried. Bol TV must demonstrate its revenue stream is clean. This is not media freedom issue.

As BOL comes under ever-greater scrutiny, the fate of more than two thousand journalists, technicians and support staff remains unknown. Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh and Viqas Atiq, also the CEO and COO of the BOL Network, are being held by the FIA until June 4.

BOL employees protesting outside their office in Karachi. Image credit Stand with BOL, used with permission

Several political parties and people from the Pakistani media industry have joined their heads to show support for the upcoming channel and BOL's employees, amid signs that the channel is losing its battle for survival.

Muhammad Shahzaib Bajwa, a 21-year-old Pakistani exchange student in the US, has been in a coma since 13 November 2013 when a deer collided with the car he and his friends were riding in outside of the city of Minneapolis. At a local hospital after the accident, Bajwa went into cardiac arrest. Doctors were able to resuscitate him, but he suffered brain damage and has been comatose ever since.

Just as Bajwa was fighting for his life, another battle was brewing. Bajwa's student visa was set to expire on 28 February, and Essentia Health-St. Mary's Medical Center in Duluth, Minnesota, where he was transferred after the accident, was making plans to deport him to a Pakistani hospital, saying its hands were legally tied. His family feared Bajwa wouldn't survive the flight.

As the visa expiration date neared, support on social media for Bajwa began to pour in, and an online campaign to raise funds and to pressure the US to allow the student to stay for treatment quickly spread throughout the web. Finally, after Pakistan’s Ambassador in the US Jalil Abbas Jilani became involved, Bajwa's brother announced on 20 February that US authorities had agreed to extend the student's visa.

Social media takes up the cause

Bajwa's medical costs exceeded 350,000 dollars in mid-February and continued to climb. The hospital agreed to absorb the costs and not dip into the insurance money, but warned (before the visa was extended) that it would cease paying on 28 February. Essentia Health also said it would pay the medical evacuation costs, though it threatened to pull the coverage if the family didn't sign off on returning Bajwa to Pakistan, according to his brother Shahraiz Bajwa.

With the family unable to fund Bajwa's extensive treatment once the hospital pulled its financial support, his brother launched an online fundraising campaign on website gofundme.com, which has collected to date more than 132,000 US dollars of its 300,000-dollar goal.

On Facebook, groups such as “Support For Shahzaib Bajwa” helped to spread the word about the need for donations. “Inshallah God will help you guys more. People show that humanity still exists in its full context,” one user, Mubarik Hasan, wrote. Other users, A Facebook user like Mohammad Jibran Nasir published statuses urging friends to help.

The peace initiative of the Jang Group of Pakistan and the Times of India, Aman ki Asha, shared a plea on Facebook from someone who had met Bajwa:

From an Indian about a Pakistani: “I request you from the core of my heart if you could help this lovely guy. I met him on my last visit to Pakistan and I've great memories of the time spent with him. I request you to pl help him out of the situation in which he and his family is.”

Meanwhile, an online petition was created on change.org to demand the extension of Bajwa's visa; it has so far received more than 8,000 signatures. Bajwa's family was not hopeful about the quality of treatment he would receive in Pakistan, and his mother feared signing off on the medical flight would be sending her son to his death.

On the petition, Ivy Vainio from Minnesota wrote:

Shahzaib needs the best medical care that he can receive right now and he will get it where he is at currently. He is one of the most wonderful young men that I have met. Caring and loving to all. Please renew his visa so that he can stay and get the best treatment available to him.

Richard Mienke argued:

I would rather see such a brilliant student and decent human being be taken care of until full recovery is attained and then give him the means to continue his degree here in the United States. It is not a question of citizenship, it is a question of humanity and doing the right thing. Period.

On Twitter, users pushed the campaign even further with tweets and retweets. Professor of International Relations, Earth and Environment at Boston University Adil Najam wrote:

I met #ShahzaibBajwa when he was full of life-on #LUMS#NOP scholarship for brightest students in financial need. Now fighting for his life.

Bajwa, who suffered severe facial fractures, will eventually need reconstructive surgery. He remains comatose, but can open his eyes, squeeze his mother's hand, shrug his shoulders and has some movement in his legs.

Doctors at the Essentia Health-St. Mary's Medical Center say that it will take at least a few years to determine his chances of complete recovery. With his visa renewed, officials are now making plans to move Bajwa to a long-term facility in the area.

Fireworks during the opening ceremony of Sindh Festival held in Moen Jo Daro. Image by Jamal Dawoodpoto. Copyright Demotix (3/2/2014)

The people of Sindh province in the south of Pakistan, the site of one of the oldest civilizations in the world, are currently celebrating a festival to pay tribute to their rich and vast cultural heritage. The brainchild of the opposition Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, son of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the festival aims to revive the history of Sindh, his home province, with a 15-day celebration in various cities showcasing local art, music, sport and more. However, critics accused him of playing the Sindh card by exploiting the peace loving innocent Sindhi people.

If that was not enough, before the celebrations had even begun, the festival drew ire from some for its decision to hold the theatrical opening ceremony at the ancient ruins of Mohenjo-daro.

So the Sindh Festival opened last night at Mohenjodaro, but it didn't remain untouched by controversy: the accusation that the ruins were being damaged by preparations for the festival, including the building of a stage, construction of steel pillars, and other things that shouldn't be happening on or around delicate ruins from a five-thousand year old civilisation. In addition, the vibrations by the construction and the loudspeakers during the concert, and the bright spotlights would possibly degrade the site even further. Furore erupted on social media, petitions were signed, and letters written. The Festival went ahead as planned and by all accounts was successful, but it's still a sensitive subject as we wait to assess the impact of the concert on the site post-event.

Labourers prepare for the Sindh Festival at Moenjo-daro (Mound of the Dead), the location of the remains of an ancient Indus Valley civilisation. Image by Jamal Dawoodpoto. Copyright Demotix (3/2/2014)

Local journalist and environmental activist Amar Guriro's photographs of the stage being constructed at the ruins first drew the attention of many to the choice of venue when they viral on social media. Debates emerged over the use of wooden and steel scaffolding over and near the ruins, heavy spotlights and lasers for a light show, and sound systems for the ceremony that could possibly damage the area.

While commenting on Amar Guriro's photographs, Shah added on her blog:

I was very concerned when I saw the photographs and I retweeted them so that people might pay attention to the issue. The Festival organisers responded by claiming they'd had archeological experts both local and foreign approve the plans and help build the site in a safe way.

According to UNESCO, Mohenjodaro is the best-preserved urban ruin on the Indian subcontinent. The ruins, unearthed by a British archaeologist Sir John Marshall in 1922, are already threatened by harsh climatic conditions, floods and saline action of the Indus River water.

Ever since the news broke on social media, protests and online petitions signed against the opening ceremony at the Mohenjodaro ruins marred the main event. According to a news report published in Dawn Newspaper, UNESCO was unhappy with the idea of holding an event at the ruins. The report said that a week before the festival at Moenjodaro, the director of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites declared the opening ceremony as an “improper” activity.

But here is what the organizers had to say after the opening ceremony of the Sindh Festival at Mohenjodaro:

A picture worth thousand words, says it all. Moenjodaro after inauguration on Feb 1 is open and unhurt. pic.twitter.com/yw2vDBNQGK

]]>https://globalvoices.org/2014/02/12/controversial-sindh-festival-accused-of-risking-ancient-ruins-for-flashy-kickoff/feed/1Taliban Play Trump with Peace Talks in Pakistanhttps://globalvoices.org/2014/02/03/taliban-play-trump-with-peace-talks-in-pakistan/
https://globalvoices.org/2014/02/03/taliban-play-trump-with-peace-talks-in-pakistan/#commentsMon, 03 Feb 2014 14:14:58 +0000http://globalvoicesonline.org/?p=454282The Pakistani government finally announced their negotiating team for peace talks with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The banned militant outfit responded with their own team, which includes politicians from the very parties that were backing the government's peace talks, including cricketer-turned- politician Imran Khan, who declined the role.

In an analysis piece written for the daily Dawn, Peshawar-based journalist Ismail Khan writes:

It’s a win-win situation – tail, I win, head, you lose! Like-minded people on both sides. As one commentator put it, it was a case of Liverpool playing against Liverpool.

Lahore-based tweeter Faisal Sherjan tweets:

#TTP list of its five nominated negotiators proves they have a zany sense of humour.

While speaking to parliament on January 29, 2014 Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said that regardless of the recent deadly attacks by the Taliban, Pakistan hopes that its talks-first approach will help end violence in the country.

The Taliban announced team to facilitate talks with the government, includes three top Islamist party leaders Maulana Sami-ul-Haq, Mufti Kifayatullah and Prof Ibrahim Khan, the controversial former chief cleric of Lal Masjid Maulana Abdul Aziz, and former cricketer turned Chairman of Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf (PTI) party Imran Khan.

Imran Khan's nomination resulted in lots of buzz on Twitter, from his critics who call with “Taliban Khan” for his pro-talks stance and his supporters who defend him vociferously.

I can really realllly not stop laughing at the TTP nominating Imran Khan as THEIR representative for the negotiations. Vindication AT LAST.

In some of the major attacks of 2014, a senior police officer Chaudhry Aslam was assassinated on January 9 in an IED blast in Karachi. Aslam was highly critical of TTP activities in the city and had either arrested or killed several TTP members in recent years. The TTP Mohmand Agency group claimed responsibility for that attack.

Later on January 19, Taliban militants hit a security convoy in the Bannu area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and killed 20 people. The next day, at least 13 more people were killed in a bomb explosion in Rawalpindi.

“It is madness for sheep to talk peace with a wolf,” said British historian and clergyman Thomas Fuller. In other words, we cannot change the nature of wild creatures. We cannot predict when snakes, lions, wolves or any other wild animals will attack, and without protecting ourselves we cannot sit calmly. In the context of Pakistan, the sheep is the government, and the wolf is the Taliban. It is madness on the part of the government to want peace talks with the Taliban, who only understand the language of weapons and violence.

Yet another report called the “Pakistan Security Report 2013” compiled by the Pak Institute of Peace Studies (PIPS) showed that in 2013, TTP remained the reason behind unrest in the country:

Compared to 2012, the number of reported terrorist attacks in Pakistan posted a nine per cent increase while the number of people killed and injured in these attacks increased by 19 per cent and 42 per cent, respectively. Despite the killing of its top brass in drone attacks and military operations by Pakistani security forces, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) remained the major actor of instability in the country in 2013 through its alliance with numerous militant groups. It carried out 645 terrorist attacks in 50 districts, claiming the lives of 732 civilians and 425 security forces personnel.

Screenshot of Pakistani Taliban Spokesman Shahidullah Shahid speaking about Tendulkar to a reporter, from Vimeo uploaded by user “TalibanMediaWatch”

Record-breaking batsman Tendulkar recently played his last cricket game ending a legendary 24-year career. The “news” about his retirement and flood of tributes across South Asia, UK and Australia were soon trumped by an alleged “warning” from the Pakistani Taliban.

But the Taliban say they gave no such warning and are very upset that they were misquoted so far and wide since November 28, 2013. Pakistani Twitter users and independent journalists @desmukh and @hyzaidi, debunked the “source” of the news as a quote taken out of context almost immediately, but the false headlines continue to make its way across the world without corrections.

A spokesman for the banned organization Pakistani Taliban did speak about the cricket legend, but his words were completely taken out of context – first by the international news wire AFP, but also by credible news outlets across the UK and many former British colonies, where the game continues to be popular.

So AFP took the TTP Tendulkar quote totally out of context. Full video. Starts around 9.30 http://t.co/t2zgboxE5R

The Taliban warning in media outlets is sourced to a 50-second video clip uploaded to Daily Motion and other sites, in which Pakistani Taliban spokesman Shahidullah Shahid talks about the cricket legend and seems to be urging the Pakistani media to stop praising Sachin Tendulkar. But watching 30 seconds before and after the clip reveal a much different story.

The clip originates from the 17-minute long video linked in Desmukh's tweet above, uploaded to Vimeo by an account called Taliban Media Watch, and is actually a “Q and A” session with a spokesman from the banned Pakistani Taliban Shahidullah Shahid during which he talks to a “local reporter”, with two imposing gun-carrying masked soldiers behind him. He replies to questions about peace talks with Pakistan, US drone strikes, and politics in Pakistan.

Six minutes into the video, the Taliban spokesman is asked about a controversial comment made by Pakistani Islamist politician Munawar Hassan that enraged people across Pakistan.

The spokesman gives a rather convoluted philosophical reply in the next five minutes using Tendulkar as an example, and at one point essentially says that if someone were to say don't praise him because praising him is unpatriotic, it doesn't take away from the reality that he is a great cricketer.

Here is a translation by Global Voices Urdu translator Rai Azlan of the clip from 9:15-11:30. (Media outlets that wrongly reported the news only quoted the second paragraph in bold below, which does send the wrong message, if reported out of context):

I would like to say something, especially to the media, that all those people who criticize Mr Munawar Hassan are doing exactly like…[for example] the cricketer from India named Tendulkar – recently Pakistani media has praised him a lot, in fact many Pakistanis have admired and praised him. On the other hand, they criticized Misbah-ul-Haq [Pakistani cricketer player].

Now if someone should come up and tell the media that Tendulkar might be the greatest player but he should not be praised because it is totally against Pakistani nationalistic and patriotic sentiments. Or [should say] that even if Misbah is a substandard cricketer he must be praised simply because he is Pakistani.

…People who are criticizing Munawar Hassan are essentially using this logic.

That if a soldier of Pakistan's armed forces dies while fighting for American Interests, for a law given by the West or to protect [Western] democracy, he has the right to be called a shaheed (Islamic martyr). But the rest of the people, like the Taliban or our leader Hakimullah Mehsud or other mujahideen [fighters], even if they are fighting for Islam but are also against the current Government of Pakistan, and against the State of Pakistan, it doesn't matter that in reality they are (shaheed) and confirmed to go to heaven, [these people say] they have no right to be called shaheed (martyr).

This logic certainly opposes reality, just like the example of cricketers I just gave, everyone knows how much it is opposite of reality to not admire the greatest cricketer [Tendulkar].

Pakistani filmmaker, journalist and media critic Hasan Zaidi (@hyzaidi), who had been tweeting and tagging @AFP on Twitter about the real story, felt surprised when Dawn, a leading English daily in Pakistan, published the wrong story:

Now Dawn has carried the totally rubbish Taliban-Tendulkar @AFP story on its back page, a full day of debunking later. I give up. — Hasan Zaidi (@hyzaidi) November 29, 2013

According to reports, the situation turned violent in Rawalpindi, a garrison city that borders capital Islamabad, on November 15, after a cleric made inflammatory statements on a loud speaker at a Deobandi mosque along the path of an Ashura procession in a popular market area, agitating and offending both Shias and Sunnis. The cleric denigrated the Prophet Mohammad's grandson, a revered figure across all sects of Islam, whose death Shias mourn on Ashura. Blogger Sarah Khan wrote about the account of an eye-witness on the Let Us Build Pakistan (LUBP) blog:

According to the eye-witness, Mullah’s inflammatory speech agitated the mourners in procession. [..] Agitated (Shia and Sunni) mourners finding it difficult to bear the (Deobandi) mullah (cleric) started shaking the grills outside the mosque in protest against the comments. In meantime someone from inside mosque 1st hurled a stone at mourners shaking the grills. The stone was followed by firing from mosque rooftop. Firing caused panic and people started running. [sic]

While Shia mosques and Ashura processions have been been targeted and attacked by banned anti-Shia militant groups in Pakistan, the Rawalpindi incident marked a rare spontaneous clash between Sunni and Shia crowds.

Just a day after the Rawalpindi unrest, isolated incidents of violence broke out between Shia and Sunni groups in various parts of the country. Hundreds of miles south of Rawalpindi, several people were injured in Multan city and a group damaged a Shia mosque and shops in the neighbouring town of Chishtian.

To reinforce their influence, extremist groups increasingly rely on social media but our law enforcement and regulatory agencies still don’t know how to tackle the challenge. Social media can be effectively used to bring the police and community on one page. In mega urban centres, apart from the physical presence of the law enforcers, people expect the online presence of the police. [..] Police need to learn quickly about social media to keep pace. Many police forces around the world have started to use it for engagement, intelligence and investigation, and often release pictures or videos of wanted criminal and terrorist suspects on their websites.

The websites of police departments in Pakistan, on the contrary, are neither public friendly nor interactive. This is a pity as police websites could help in the introduction of e-policing in urban areas.”

Rawalpindi native Qurat-ul-Ain Fatima writes in her blog during the curfew which ended on November 19:

As army roams around the streets of the city trying to “keep peace” , the social Media buffs are making their own statements book justifying this or that picture as the proof of perpetrator to be “Shia” or “Sunni”. The Humanitarian aspect of the tragic event and its long lasting repercussions have almost escaped everyone’s thought. The trend shows we will forget the incident as soon as the temporary peace is restored. [all sic]

The sectarian militants are well organised and have their own system of gathering information. They have access to the latest technology and are a step ahead of the overall counterterrorism strategy. That is where we can see the gap. The political face of sectarianism is known to the intelligence agencies; but greater efforts are needed to crack down on militants. Without a serious approach to the problem of sectarian militancy, the risk of communal flare-ups, which has so far not manifested itself in most places, cannot be discounted […] At the same time, a check is also required to be kept on those who show their hate towards communities through incendiary speeches and literature. Engaging rational-minded Shia and Sunni religious scholars would be indispensable to this exercise.

]]>https://globalvoices.org/2013/11/25/a-closer-look-at-pakistans-sectarian-violence/feed/9Peace Unlikely as Pakistan's New Taliban Chief Swears Revengehttps://globalvoices.org/2013/11/13/peace-unlikely-as-pakistans-new-taliban-chief-swears-revenge/
https://globalvoices.org/2013/11/13/peace-unlikely-as-pakistans-new-taliban-chief-swears-revenge/#commentsWed, 13 Nov 2013 05:41:25 +0000http://globalvoicesonline.org/?p=441684The Pakistani government has shelved planned peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban, following the election of a new Taliban chief. Mullah Fazlullah has shunned the negotiation table and sworn to avenge the death of his predecessor Hakimullah Mehsud, who was killed in a US drone strike earlier this month.

Following Mehsud's death, the Pakistan Taliban also known as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a loose coalition of militant factions primarily operating along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region, named Fazlullah, the man behind the attack on education activist Malala Yousufzai, as their new chief.

Soon his militant group started blowing up schools, forcing men to grow beards and preventing women from going to markets. After a failed peace deal with Fazlullah's father-in-law, the Pakistani military pushed his militant group out of Swat by 2009.
Writer, public policy analyst and anchor Raza Rumi (@Razarumi) sarcastically tweets:

So one “our own people” heads the TTP. Why is everyone so shocked. He is only fighting US imperialism. So what if he kills Pakistanis.

By appointing Fazlullah as its new head, the TTP has tried to slap out of confusion those of us [Pakistanis] who believe that terrorism is simply a tribal response to drones and will wither away once strikes end and the US withdraws its troops from Afghanistan.